between who we are and what we could be
by IzzyandDesRoxSox
Summary: once when she asked for a promise, he smirked and only replied "we'll always have Paris, Maria." / Hill/Fury in 100 drabbles. \
1. father-in-law

between who we are and what we could be

summary: once when she asked for a promise, he smirked and only replied "we'll always have Paris.. Maria." Hill/Fury in 100 drabbles all across time, the beginning and end.

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_**i.**_

Edwin Hill, although cold to his only child due to the earlier years of depression from the death of his wife Sarah, had the typical feeling of paternal protection like any father the first time he hears word about the possibility of having found that special someone.

The conversations on that exact topic are like any other with his daughter, awkward, short, but at least bluntly to the point. He'll ask the basic questions on the phone; _Who is he? Does he treat you right? What's he like?_

She'd answer with yes or no responses, sometimes with a few details, although obviously hesitant and flushing on the other line when it carries out to the big one- _'How far has this relationship gone? Where are you two currently at?'_

Edwin Hill is man who is rarely ever wrong, or so he'd led himself to believe. He expects Maria to bring to his place some charming punk about her age, or maybe some recent Harvard graduate who's an airhead when it comes to politics but could at least spoil her, or maybe- well maybe- anyone or anything other than what he got.

He doesn't expect a war veteran, the director of S. H. I. E. L. D.,-

(This make Edwin thanks God silently to himself he decided against playing that little joke on Maria of bringing a shotgun with him when opening the door.)

-an _eye patch_ of all curious things, and a man possibly older than himself.

Needless to say, Edwin couldn't help but have mixed emotions from the first appearance, despite the moral to not judge a book by its' cover. _'But Jesus Christ this guy's gotta be older than me by fifteen years!'_ he remarked in his bewildered thoughts.

Edwin was not very close to his daughter, and was well aware of this too. This was the conseuquence he paid for his selfish actions of treating her coldly after the death of her mother, and of course after all these years now regretted it all. He felt a pang of disappointment from his inner self, that despite he was her father, he really had no say in the relationship, when he hardly had one with Maria except for awkward timed once-in-a-blue-moon afternoon phone calls and Christmas/birthday cards. Who was he to stand in their way?

But how could he just stand by and let this happen? He wasn't much of a father to Maria, but he was still her father either or and should act just like it. Not just let any man, even if the director of some government thingy, just hop in his daughter's pants as easy as that. No, he wouldn't, he just couldn't. Edwin Hill was going to...

.. end up stopping. Literally stopping, and just looked looked at them.

There was an unexpected glow in Maria's face, especially her smile, and it sent chills down her father's spine at the notice how deathly similar her physical complexion this way was similar to her mother's. She and the director were holding hands tightly together, fingers intertwined, shaking very slightly from nervousness. Edwin noticed this out of the corner of his eye, since they were obviously trying to be bashful in a polite manner, and concealed their hands towards the side of his dark overcoat. He noticed the glance they exchange to one another, nervous and yet assured, confident and in love, hopeful but afraid. A million things at once.

Just as he and Sarah had once been.

_'He treats her right.'_ Edwin mentally nodded in approval.

After gawking for probably a minute or so, but to what Edwin felt like hours, and Maria and Nick like a week long examination trial, Edwin cleared his throat and offered out of his hand.

"So, ahem, I take it you're the cradle snatcher I've heard all about?" he remarked, with an eyebrow raised up in interest.

_'Age IS just a number, or so we've all been told.'_ Edwin remarked to himself in his thoughts jokingly.

He figured he must've wrecked up the pair with anxiousness pretty badly, because obviously both of them forgot how to take a joke. The director with fashion references to pirates had a most curious expression on his face, with his eyebrows raised up by taken surprise, dark eyes stunned, and a tad bit of color from his dark face left him at the shock of those words. Maria, to the contrary, immediately turned a furiously bright rosy red.

"Daddy!" she gasped in disbelief, and hissed angrily, embarassed all at the same time.

The pair were still a little shaken and flabbergasted as Edwin still left his hand open for the offer of a handshake, to which minutes after the remark's surprise effects had died down, Nick Fury daringly took up to.

"Edwin Hill, Maria's father as you've probably figured out." he greeted.

"Nicholas Fury; Pleasure to meet you sir." the man nodded curtly and with a smile. He seemed like he wanted to add more to hit the brownie points, maybe the cheesy ones to compliment Edwin's house or remark about how Maria was such a wonderful woman. Edwin could read it all off Nick's eyes when he pondered on it for a second.

He obviously made up his made and went against the brownosing, and Edwin smiled.

_'I think I just might like you after all.'_ he decided- for now of course.

_**xxx**_

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_**a/n: There will be a later drabble on the infamous 'meet the father' mission from the POVs of Maria and Nick. Because let's face it, no matter who you are, no matter what you've faced, there is no greater trial than getting on your future in-laws good side. ;)**_


	2. scars i

_**prompt:**__ scars i_

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_**ii.**_

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"Agent Hill— stop." his voice was coarse and in a typical tone of lacking patience. However he was weary too, the fatigue overcoming him, and he merely grumbled.

She shifted her weight on the mattress, and he felt it beneath him shake slightly like a boat rocking gently on the sea, and without even looking he knew she was closer to him. Just inches away from her chest pressing against his back, the slightest touch of the tips of her sharpened fingernails, and the sensation of her hot breath making contact with his skin.

(Now Nick Fury was not a man who feared, but Maria Hill was a woman who knew how to make him shiver.)

((She was in fact, the _only_ woman who knew how to make him shiver.))

"You're bleeding." she merely replied. Not even ending with a _'sir'._ It wasn't a question, just a statement of the obvious, in a somewhat cold tone. Her icy blue eyes narrowed in annoyance. It was just so typical of Nick— whether out of humbleness or stupidity, she didn't have a clue— to act like his injuries meant nothing.

(They weren't just anything to her.)

((It meant a chance of losing everything of him— a chance which she was _not_ willing to take. Ever.))

"That's a direct— " he began to snarl, but was cut off as she dabbed the warm washcloth on the exact wound, and fuck it _hurt_. Nick immediately stopped and gritted his teeth, to the point in which he wondered if he was going to end up breaking his teeth to the roots, his hands tightening the grip they had on the sheets of the bed.

"Nearly hot from the back, one way towards the heart." Maria instead finished with an arched eyebrow and small all-knowing smirk, doing the mental math in her head, and of course she's right. Isn't she always. It was the tiniest of things the young woman always seemed to outwit him at and professionally parade around at him. The bullet wound was too far of a distance to be anything dangerous, just more like a graze, or — as Nick would probably call it— a 'flesh wound'.

(That made him stagger and nearly fall, had she not caught him in time.)

((Not that she was terrified or deathly worried he wouldn't be alright.))

"Don't tell me you're worried about your appearance." she joked, well, at least seemed to humor herself. The back of Nick Fury alone could be labeled as a million things— the basic two being a map, and a story of a warrior told through 'pictures'.

Her fingers very lightly traced the rough surface of one particular scar, albeit a recent one, just beneath his right shoulder blade. It curved to a point where it appeared to look like a thin crescent moon. It was so different compared to all the rough, jaggered, unindentifiable shaped scars. Some of which paled his rich chocolate colored skin, some that to a degree seemed to never entirely heal after all, and some that look like souvenirs from the God knows how many times Nick had been right at Death's door— and in quite the Fury-like manner— professionally told Him to go fuck himself.

"Now Agent Hill, no need to gawk. I'm no work of art." Nick suddenly commented, and didn't even need to turn to notice the startled expression on Maria's face as she snapped out of her daze. He smiled amusedly, as she flustered. Regaining her self control— although the tiniest fragment of her mind teased her about _'Your boss is shirtless in front of you. You know you like your guys with battle scars.'_—, she cleared her throat and finished patching the wound up.

Maybe it was that moment right then and there that made them actually aware of the situation; He was injured, lacking a shirt at the moment, she was treating him.

(It beats doing a stupid errand like getting coffee for everyone.)

((It sure as hell beats being _dead._))

Neither one spoke as he quietly put his shirt back on, from a side-view of Maria's eyes. His torso was kept well-built after all this time, aged well, hardened with a similar amount of scars all across. Although he was no longer as young as he once was, well, what did it matter?

(Not that she was gawking or trying hard not to out of the corner of her eye.)

((Or that he noticed.))

_'It's not the years that matter honey, it's the mileage.'_ he mused in his thoughts.

"This'll just go with my collection." he turned towards her, and for once, winked. Which was weird for someone like him to do, a person who was permanently lacking the other eye as it was.

Nonetheless, they exchanged meaningful smiles.

_**xxx**_

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_**Just imagine this as just some imaginary mission that apparent in the middle of a fight, Nick was injured in the witness of Maria. He shakes it off as nothing, but she insists on treating him. Just a little helpful storyline to clear up the confusion. ^.^**_

_**Personally, I imagine Nick**_—_**a man of many secrets as it is**_—_** probably is a man with many scars that trace back to stories. Although if it's ever mention what he looks like shirtless or if he really has a lot of scars, as far as I know, isn't really said.**_

_**x x i'll just go to my corner and pretend anyways...**_


	3. scars ii

_**prompt: **scars ii_

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It didn't really seem to be anything particularly stand-outish, if such a word exists, the first time he laid eyes on it.

At the timing of the situation earlier as long as she was breathing, walking, and doing something called being alive like the rest, then he could shake it all off and focus on the main priorities concerning the Avengers.

But then much later, once the flames of a ferocious battle died down and left remaining were it's unsettled ashes, he noticed out of the corner of his eye how large the bandage just_ barely_ above her eye is.

He shudders at the idea of such an injury being, what, just an inch lower towards her eye, and being told by a doctor that it's required for that eye to be removed.

_'Look, we'll have matching eyepatches!'_ she'd just laugh it off, eventually, as her response.

It'll be painful to deal with for the next few weeks no doubt, he noted. Her right eye twitched occassionally to some of her facial expressions, the movements being painful now due the wound taking it's time to heal.

Some scars can be extremely painful though, despite the healing process, Nick would certainly know from experience. And he just very nearly dares himself to think about it being painful on Maria, if so, and just how much so.

To even imagine someone like her— stubborn, strong-willed, bold— in agony and misery...

Nick quietly takes a deep breath for his own sake, just to relaxen himself and uncurl the fists he had unconsciously tightened.

(And tell that pissed off part of his conscience deep in the back of his head to shut the hell up.)

((Particularly on it's enraged and immature desire to beat the living hell out of Loki and give out 'injuries' that made Maria's and his look like pathetic paper cuts.))

It wasn't anything life-threatening at least. Or at least he supposes he should be grateful. It was just a nasty little gash, and even then Agent Hill, similar to him, was otherwise unfazed by it even as it bled down her cheeks.

_(Red. _He instantly remembers. Plenty of red. Too much of it.)

Nick Fury doesn't have a favorite color, but then again, red has never been a particular color that was on the possible list. He's seen plenty of people bleed, from the tiniest of paper cuts while handling files to men being cut open and desperately clutching their entrails together, it's splashed his face and ruined his clothes. Red is the color of something that leaves stains, physically and mentally.

(And there's no question that hers' will end up a scar.)

He finds himself honestly thinking about the idea of a scar, something so ugly and permanent, on her face— a face so preserved and untouched. Almost innocent, really, like the innocent victim of another's fight.

But this, he reminds himself, was everyone's fight. Also, Agent Hill is _no _damsel, she will never lay down and take shit, because she's Maria, she's his girl.

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**x x x**

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About a week and a half later, she decides for herself to have the bandages removed. He is the very first one to see her without the bandages, in fact he is actually nearby as she inspects herself briefly in the mirror.

_The scar isn't so bad after all_, he thinks to himself, breathing an uneasy sigh of relief from an unknown anxiety that had apparently built-up inside of him after all that time.

She furrows her brow, a little unsure. Although not the most feminine or self conscience, her heart did falter a bit at the sight of it. It wasn't particularly flattering, Hell it was just weird looking at it and the fact that this was going to be with her for the rest of her life, something just smack dap right there above her left eye. Maria restrains a scowl— of course, an ugly little scar just had to be right directly above what she considered to be one of her few good physical traits.

Nick notices the poor girl's discourage and decides to enlighten her.

"Look at it as the first to your future coming collection." he informed her in a light hearted matter-of-factly tone.

"Hmph. Watch out sir, you just might have competition." Maria smirked, arching her left brow. A partial area of her scar moved with it. Nick gave out a rare hearty laugh.

"I seriously doubt that."

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**x x x**

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_**Guyssss. C'mon. ;_; Just one review? I can see people like this story since I notice the amount of faves and follows, but can I please get more reviews? I'd really love to hear what you guys have to say.**_


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